Obama Admin. admits to surveillance methods: Beating a Dead Horse Pt. 74

[coax]

And the government will become a self controlled entity. I mean anything that it decides is a problem to the status quo will have to be put down. In a weird way, the people will have to completely trust the government to do its job. Any disagreement between the people and the government undermines the governments job, does it not? I mean as a thought experiment. And by definition of classified information, the people cannot fully agree to all the decisions. It's a clusterfuck when I think about it like this

[eugene]

 

 

It does strike me as odd that more people aren't equally concerned about their private information being plastered all over other social media sites as well. Not sure why you're trying to guide me into a conversation about who's worse: the government or google, though. Got my complaints about both.

it's just an interesting observation i think. people have been giving up their information to various corporations who may exploit it for money since the existence of internet and were generally cool with that, but when it gets to the government its a "PRIVACY HOLOCAUST", "DEATH TO OBAMA" and such.

 

it shouldn't be hard to understand the difference between being ok with a corp using your online habits (and afaik this doesn't include the actual contents of any kind of private communications) to advertise stuff to you, in accordance with a notification of it which you agree to when you use their service, and that same corp giving over your private info to the government who may do any number of bad things with it, depending on who is in charge at any given time. it really, really should not be difficult to understand.

 

well that's what the official policy is, i.e a bot reads your mail and gives you better ads, but the fact is that the information is stored on their servers. if you claim that google is only operating according to the law then why not claim that the government will not infringe your constitutional rights when dealing with your data.

[LimpyLoo]

And the government will become a self controlled entity. I mean anything that it decides is a problem to the status quo will have to be put down. In a weird way, the people will have to completely trust the government to do its job. Any disagreement between the people and the government undermines the governments job, does it not? I mean as a thought experiment. And by definition of classified information, the people cannot fully agree to all the decisions. It's a clusterfuck when I think about it like this

 

On paper, the government's job is to serve the citizenry.

 

Civil disobedience and general activism are necessary for gaining/protecting rights and staving off oppression.

[coax]

 

And the government will become a self controlled entity. I mean anything that it decides is a problem to the status quo will have to be put down. In a weird way, the people will have to completely trust the government to do its job. Any disagreement between the people and the government undermines the governments job, does it not? I mean as a thought experiment. And by definition of classified information, the people cannot fully agree to all the decisions. It's a clusterfuck when I think about it like this

 

On paper, the government's job is to serve the citizenry.

 

Civil disobedience and general activism are necessary for gaining/protecting rights and staving off oppression.

 

 

Yeah but then what happens when there are so many people and those people disagree on so many things, it is impossible to create really a coherent government to serve all? It ends up serving some abstract "people of _country_" of which is never fully determined. Probably some mix of the people with the most money, and on occasion the people with the loudest voices, whenever a topic enters the general mainstream that affects them directly in some new way (But I don't think a truly dispruptive movement would be allowed to occur, say if bitcoin would become a major player to the extent that it would undermine the government, and that's kind of a problem). Any other topic or group of people will be left in the dark unless they have lots of money and influence, I presume. And you know, in a broad sense, democracy is kind of oppression for some people, in all environments. It doesn't seem like a very healthy way to run things this centralized which is why I find anarchism very appealing. Decentralization makes the system organize locally and thus can reach higher complexity. Not that it's the solution to the human condition, behavior and all of this. But there is something off here, I don't know what it is. Probably I'm put off my natures inherent complexity and non-solution "behavior"

[eugene]

 

problem is just the mere suggestion or hint that we *could be* spied on regardless of criminal acts, leaves a chilling effect that alters the way we act and behave on a subconscious level. Even if you don't think anything you do is worthy of spying or something to the effect of 'if im not doing anything wrong i dont have anything to hide' i believe that deep down on some level you are modulating your behavior online and in the public sphere as a result of surveillance.

 

if you want to do this test for yourself, next time you're at a bar or dinner with friends put a tape recorder down on the table, start it and say 'im not going to listen to this, so just carry on as normal' and chances are they wont carry on as normal

 

Sadly, whenever I have brought privacy and government surveillance up with people I know, the general consensus is that they don't care. In fact it's a bit of a stonewall to convince anyone that government spying is bad. They would rather be protected from criminals and get criminals caught, than have privacy. It's like there isn't really enough surveillance. Just record EVERYTHING and it'll be a lot better. If I try to bring up possible abuses of power, it turns into a heated argument and such. I don't know, maybe privacy really is gone. I didn't think it was, but imagine the Xbox One and smartphones and Google Glass everywhere, it is a potential source for government to tap into. No reason to believe otherwise.

 

and why is this a bad reason to give up your privacy ?

[lumpenprol]

lol at Eugene.

 

Question: is any data gathered this way admissible in any shape or form in the US yet? Or would they just be using it as the basis for a search warrant or something? (can't be arsed to read about this).

 

Am in full support of the luke viia/sr4/john erhlichmann position.

[LimpyLoo]

lol at Eugene.

 

Question: is any data gathered this way admissible in any shape or form in the US yet? Or would they just be using it as the basis for a search warrant or something? (can't be arsed to read about this).

 

Am in full support of the luke viia/sr4/john erhlichmann position.

 

Unfortunately it seems like courts aren't very dependable these days when it comes to honoring the Constitution.

[MisterE]

 

the only 'reason' to believe otherwise seems to be 'why would the government want to spy on me, my life is boring' etc.

 

One of the interesting dilemmas about that point of view, is it essentially means that as long as you lead a boring an uneventful life the government will stay off your back. Is that really a good way to live life? I don't think it is. I think even just keeping the door open that at some point you *may* want to fight back against the government in some sort of ideological or activist fashion is a good thing that can empower you. If you give up and just say fuck it, i'm boring I have nothing to hide, it seems like you're just setting up a path in front of you playing right into the government's hand. It's also worth noting that journalists and whistleblowers will now be more scared to release information that could be of public value for everybody. Being an activist and journalist puts you directly in the crosshairs for privacy intrusion, but they won't be the only ones effected. If one of them was going to release a document talking about how a particular product is toxic, they might think twice out of fear they are being watched, and you as a person who's 'not doing anything the government is interested in' might suffer by using that product without knowing it's toxic. that's just one example of how this privacy erosion effects us all, and not just on a psychological level.

basically what i'm against is the idea of self censorship as a way to go through life, this is what privacy erosion will lead to even more so than it exists now.

 

Its not that my life is boring or that i am self censoring myself just not to get under the government's surveillance, im not a political activist and probably never will, i dont see myself doing anything that would make the government see me as a treat.

 

The only thing that makes me angry from a personal point of view is that journalism and some art suffer from this type of stuff.

 

are you just ignoring my reply to a post of yours i made earlier or do you not agree with it? the only bad thing you see as possibly coming of this is that journalists and some artists may be targeted? so you don't believe it could or would ever be used to squash political opposition? you don't think that if that happened it would be a bad thing with real results that would affect you? just think about how much the nazis would have LOVED to have something like this. or stalin russia. our gov apparently also loves the idea of it considering how much all this type of stuff has been amped up lately.

 

how about the slippery slope argument? do you not think it applies here? you have no problem with this, but how about if the conversations you have in your own home were all recorded too? would you have a problem with THAT? because it's where we are heading. we are heading to a point where people may have every single thing they say or do recorded for government use, from their births to their deaths. the fact that anyone could be apathetic to this just blows my mind.

[YO303]

 

 

the only 'reason' to believe otherwise seems to be 'why would the government want to spy on me, my life is boring' etc.

 

One of the interesting dilemmas about that point of view, is it essentially means that as long as you lead a boring an uneventful life the government will stay off your back. Is that really a good way to live life? I don't think it is. I think even just keeping the door open that at some point you *may* want to fight back against the government in some sort of ideological or activist fashion is a good thing that can empower you. If you give up and just say fuck it, i'm boring I have nothing to hide, it seems like you're just setting up a path in front of you playing right into the government's hand. It's also worth noting that journalists and whistleblowers will now be more scared to release information that could be of public value for everybody. Being an activist and journalist puts you directly in the crosshairs for privacy intrusion, but they won't be the only ones effected. If one of them was going to release a document talking about how a particular product is toxic, they might think twice out of fear they are being watched, and you as a person who's 'not doing anything the government is interested in' might suffer by using that product without knowing it's toxic. that's just one example of how this privacy erosion effects us all, and not just on a psychological level.

basically what i'm against is the idea of self censorship as a way to go through life, this is what privacy erosion will lead to even more so than it exists now.

 

Its not that my life is boring or that i am self censoring myself just not to get under the government's surveillance, im not a political activist and probably never will, i dont see myself doing anything that would make the government see me as a treat.

 

The only thing that makes me angry from a personal point of view is that journalism and some art suffer from this type of stuff.

 

are you just ignoring my reply to a post of yours i made earlier or do you not agree with it? the only bad thing you see as possibly coming of this is that journalists and some artists may be targeted? so you don't believe it could or would ever be used to squash political opposition? you don't think that if that happened it would be a bad thing with real results that would affect you? just think about how much the nazis would have LOVED to have something like this. or stalin russia. our gov apparently also loves the idea of it considering how much all this type of stuff has been amped up lately.

 

 

Political opposition? give me a break, they dont need to spy on political opposition to squash them, the two part system/mainstream public already does that and no blood in politician's hand.

 

Did they needed to spy on dennis kucinich to squash his chances? no, the guy was laugh out of town by the fucking general public/mainstream media.

 

And by the way, i dont care of the left spies on the right or the right spies on the left, let them tear each other apart maybe dennis kucinich will rise from the ashes.

[coax]

 

 

 

 

and why is this a bad reason to give up your privacy ?

 

in itself it isn't but it's a slippery slope for reasons others have mentioned here and more. I need to sleep now though might fill out more tomorrow.

[MisterE]

 

 

 

It does strike me as odd that more people aren't equally concerned about their private information being plastered all over other social media sites as well. Not sure why you're trying to guide me into a conversation about who's worse: the government or google, though. Got my complaints about both.

it's just an interesting observation i think. people have been giving up their information to various corporations who may exploit it for money since the existence of internet and were generally cool with that, but when it gets to the government its a "PRIVACY HOLOCAUST", "DEATH TO OBAMA" and such.

 

it shouldn't be hard to understand the difference between being ok with a corp using your online habits (and afaik this doesn't include the actual contents of any kind of private communications) to advertise stuff to you, in accordance with a notification of it which you agree to when you use their service, and that same corp giving over your private info to the government who may do any number of bad things with it, depending on who is in charge at any given time. it really, really should not be difficult to understand.

 

well that's what the official policy is, i.e a bot reads your mail and gives you better ads, but the fact is that the information is stored on their servers. if you claim that google is only operating according to the law then why not claim that the government will not infringe your constitutional rights when dealing with your data.

 

i or you do agree to allow them to use our data for advertising. we didn't agree for them to hand it to someone else, especially not the government, to use for whatever they feel like. i don't particularly trust google, but their agreements are supposed to be legally binding. if they give that data to someone else that is a breach of the agreement. how do you not understand this? i never AGREED to be put into a position where now have to trust "the gov to not infringe on my constitutional rights when dealing with my data". and by the way, them having that data, that is already infringing on my constitutional rights.

 

i don't particularly trust google. but i sure as hell don't trust the government. one thing that will never fail to amaze me is how so many of the people who thought bush was evil and that bad things could happen because of his control over the gov, otherwise seem to think the gov is this great thing that should be trusted outright. personally i dont think the gov is a nanny that's going to tuck me in at night and spoon feed me my medicine when i'm sick. and i'll be just as suspicious of anyone telling me i should trust them, as i am of the gov itself.

[MisterE]

 

 

Political opposition? give me a break, they dont need to spy on political opposition to squash them, the two part system/mainstream public already does that and no blood in politician's hand.

 

Did they needed to spy on dennis kucinich to squash his chances? no, the guy was laugh out of town by the fucking general public/mainstream media.

 

And by the way, i dont care of the left spies on the right or the right spies on the left, let them tear each other apart maybe dennis kucinich will rise from the ashes.

 

so you don't consider the fact that nazi germany actually happened as being evidence that it could happen again? you don't think it's ever possible that someone gets into office and has a warped view of how things should be, and starts abusing this? do you think it would be ok for them to demand that all TV manufacturers start placing microphones in their TVs with an uplink so the gov could hear everything you say in your home? do you not think we are headed towards them having spyware in things in your home spying on you?

 

and your argument about the political opposition thing is a pretty shitty one. you're basically saying 'honest politicians already have no chance so it doesn't matter if the political system gets rigged against them even more'. its already bad so who cares if it gets worse. what an attitude!

[Chris Toffer]

The cost of using the internet

[YO303]

 

 

 

Political opposition? give me a break, they dont need to spy on political opposition to squash them, the two part system/mainstream public already does that and no blood in politician's hand.

 

Did they needed to spy on dennis kucinich to squash his chances? no, the guy was laugh out of town by the fucking general public/mainstream media.

 

And by the way, i dont care of the left spies on the right or the right spies on the left, let them tear each other apart maybe dennis kucinich will rise from the ashes.

 

so you don't consider the fact that nazi germany actually happened as being evidence that it could happen again? you don't think it's ever possible that someone gets into office and has a warped view of how things should be, and starts abusing this? do you think it would be ok for them to demand that all TV manufacturers start placing microphones in their TVs with an uplink so the gov could hear everything you say in your home? do you not think we are headed towards them having spyware in things in your home spying on you?

 

 

It could but im 99 percent sure it wont (unless something catastrophic happens and 60 percent of the first world is wiped out).

 

On your last question, i do think we are headed that way but as long as we have the free internet i dont think it will spiral out of control, knowledge is power mofo.

 

I'll start to get worried when they take the internet away from all of us.

[MisterE]

deer you are blowing my mind.

[DerWaschbar]

There's a document available on Wikileaks from a few years back that's supposedly from the NSA that gives a good example of how a database like this might work. lol at the name.

The real danger here is the amount of power this gives to the government. Whether it will be misused by this administration or the next one or the one after etc. is really not that important, it's the opportunity it presents. I think often things get out of control quite gradually and unintentionally and it's not completely apparent until it's too late.

If there is an opportunity for abuse it will be explored inevitably.

On the other hand, perhaps the Panopticon environment will create a new level of awareness in how people present themselves and a better understanding of what is really common and should be acceptable in human behaviour. I think Facebook is a good example of how this isn't the case, but at the same time this is still a very new situation we are in and we have yet to really learn from it's consequences and even what those consequences really are.

[DerWaschbar]

For those that don't want to read the whole PDF, a couple of screens of the interface:

 

[awepittance]

one thing that will never fail to amaze me is how so many of the people who thought bush was evil and that bad things could happen because of his control over the gov,

 

this is the singular thing I think we can agree on, i am fully on board with this position. And no sorry didn't read your other posts because of your previous attitude on political threads, they take a long time to read and are usually just really snarky adversarial and mostly partisan hackery. I apologize, i didn't realize you shared similar opinions in regards to privacy

[eugene]

 

 

 

 

It does strike me as odd that more people aren't equally concerned about their private information being plastered all over other social media sites as well. Not sure why you're trying to guide me into a conversation about who's worse: the government or google, though. Got my complaints about both.

it's just an interesting observation i think. people have been giving up their information to various corporations who may exploit it for money since the existence of internet and were generally cool with that, but when it gets to the government its a "PRIVACY HOLOCAUST", "DEATH TO OBAMA" and such.

 

it shouldn't be hard to understand the difference between being ok with a corp using your online habits (and afaik this doesn't include the actual contents of any kind of private communications) to advertise stuff to you, in accordance with a notification of it which you agree to when you use their service, and that same corp giving over your private info to the government who may do any number of bad things with it, depending on who is in charge at any given time. it really, really should not be difficult to understand.

 

well that's what the official policy is, i.e a bot reads your mail and gives you better ads, but the fact is that the information is stored on their servers. if you claim that google is only operating according to the law then why not claim that the government will not infringe your constitutional rights when dealing with your data.

 

i or you do agree to allow them to use our data for advertising. we didn't agree for them to hand it to someone else, especially not the government, to use for whatever they feel like. i don't particularly trust google, but their agreements are supposed to be legally binding. if they give that data to someone else that is a breach of the agreement. how do you not understand this? i never AGREED to be put into a position where now have to trust "the gov to not infringe on my constitutional rights when dealing with my data". and by the way, them having that data, that is already infringing on my constitutional rights.

 

i don't particularly trust google. but i sure as hell don't trust the government. one thing that will never fail to amaze me is how so many of the people who thought bush was evil and that bad things could happen because of his control over the gov, otherwise seem to think the gov is this great thing that should be trusted outright. personally i dont think the gov is a nanny that's going to tuck me in at night and spoon feed me my medicine when i'm sick. and i'll be just as suspicious of anyone telling me i should trust them, as i am of the gov itself.

 

 

i understand it all very well, especially the futility of arguing about the fact that the government "is not out to git you" with americans. to give you a simple analogy that summarizes my view on this: government getting a hand on all the info we're already giving to various corporations is like a malignant cancer patient getting a cold. so yes it may come as a bit of a shock (though it was as predictable as sunrise) that another party gained access to your info but it'll all pass away in a week or two.

[goDel]

One thing i agree on with Obama(!!!!! Lol) is that this is a subject worth discussing. That todays society needs to find out how it relates to the moral aspects of transparency and the relationship between safety and privacy.

 

Imo, the current (undemocratic) solution is not the right way. The least the government could do, is allowing individuals to see what information the government has on them. That's a start.

 

But, as some sort of utopian vision I'm more warm to the idea of a society where everyone has their pda at any time, storing all kinds of relevant and personal information (phone records, medical dossier, emails,...), and any time a person chooses to, lets say, take part in a marathon, that person has to allow some official to scan their pda in order to make all kinds of crosschecks (basically the same algorithms that are used now). This way a person knows which information is being checked, when, by whom, and why. And the other side is, that safety measures can still be made just as they are now. The person literally owns his own information, which I feel is one of the key issues currently.

[YO303]

This is good http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-why

 

I hope this guy doesnt become a prisoner like Manning, in my opinion he is a hero and a champion of truth and i respect that.

[eugene]

if the nsa are so ubiquitous and powerful how come they haven't been able to grab and process this guy before he whistle-blew all over ?

[Guest]

maybe he out-nerded them.

 

srsly, he's a pretty cool duder with big cajones.

[YO303]

I talked about people not doing something about injustices and stuff, this guy is risking his life for the public good, his actions are heroic, this selfless act is an inspiration.

[MisterE]

if this system is really supposed to be used to prevent terrorism, how is it that the Tsarnaev bros could do what they did even AFTER the intelligence agencies were warned about him by the Russians, and after the older bro had conducted activity on youtube in support of jihadists/jihadism?

 

it seems to me like that alone is proof that this system is either not intended for terrorism, or not focused enough on it, or just isn't good enough to justify spying on EVERYONE. i mean, it seems to me that the FBI should have been able to act on those bros without this type of massively invasive thing in place. without it. but here.. they HAD this shit, and STILL did nothing. amazing. but yeah i'm sure them spying on me and people i know is really going to help with that whole terrorism thing. isn't this like using a nuke to kill an annoying fly? how many percentage of people in this country have terroristy intentions? why can't the fbi be expected to FOLLOW FUCKING LEADS and actually spy on people who are known affiliates of terrorsts, etc? and track down other persons of interest THAT way? why spy on my fucking grandmother? and yes, keeping her phone records, regardless of whether they are keeping actual content of her calls, that is spying still. it's madness.

 

there would be a lot more outrage over this in this thread and probably all over the net if this were 10yrs ago. mountains of outrage. an inferno of outrage. but now it's like its ok that we have no privacy. now it's almost a non issue and yes it may very well blow over in a couple of weeks. i mean 10yrs ago all we KNEW was that they were wiretapping known terrorists and their affiliates. and THAT was blown into 'they're spying on us all!!!!' 'we have no privacy!!' etc. remember that? it went on for more than 2 weeks. and it was comparatively baseless. i'm not saying the programs that existed back then aren't likely what snowballed into what we have now, but it does also appear to me that all the big corps like microsoft, google, facebook, etc, began signing on for this program right around 2008.... it's clearly been amped up exponentially under the current admin. and under the current admin, fewer people care, assuming they actually cared 10yrs ago when they said they did.